2. This document provides guidance on the preparation required for a successful launch of the Invitation to Negotiate (ITN). The ITN is the foundation for Private Finance Initiative (PFI) procurement and is issued to short-listed suppliers.
3. The paper identifies the work required in the preparation of the ITN that is necessary to ensure a successful subsequent procurement. It achieves this by focusing on:
• The contents of the ITN;
• The preliminary work to be undertaken prior to, or soon after, ITN issue that will ensure MOD is in the best position to respond accurately, effectively and in a timely fashion to negotiations in such a way that leads to a successful closure as quickly as possible.
4. The ITN in a PFI procurement differs from a conventional procurement's Invitation to Tender (ITT) or Request for Proposals (RFP) in both content and objective. Consequently it requires a substantially different programme of preliminary work to be completed at the equivalent stage of the procurement.
5. It is not intended that this guidance should be overly prescriptive; different projects will have different requirements. However the paper does provide a valid model for the consideration of any PFI application. Hence, the project team should be able to explain and justify the rationale for any variance from planning for, and undertaking, the tasks listed in this note.